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What UX Design means for your business

You are about to read this article. But would you read it if you needed a magnifier? Probably not. Which illustrates how important UX Design and the design of an appropriate user experience is.

What is UX Design in a nutshell?

We are going to focus on websites for this article, in particular those involving e-commerce, although of course UX design also plays a role in mobile apps, as well as offline products and services.

UX means "User Experience" and if we want to make money with a website, it is one of the most crucial factors. A good user experience has an impact on the following factors:

Conversion rate

Bounce rate

Pages per Session

Session Duration

All of these factors are important for a good ranking in search engines, and thus for an improved SEO. Which is Google Analytics shows them 1st in the dashboard... :)

However, the various analytics platforms out there do not easily measure customer satisfaction. With the factors mentioned above we can implicitly analyze how it changes but we are not able to express it with a number. The goal of Online UX Design is finding and improving all the aspects of a website that influence the experience of an user. Its job is done when every single customer becomes a satisfied and excited customer.

How does UX Design achieve this?

A user visiting a website is like a person stepping into a store: He or she is looking for something and wants to obtain the best deal possible. The tasks of UX Design are:

To present the best products to the user;

To provide as much information as possible to the user about the products, in a user friendly fashion;

To make sure the information addresses as many senses and “cognition inputs” (visual, auditory, text) as possible;

To ensure the product information is easily accessible and understandable to the user

To design an attractive look and feel of the UI (User Interface);

To allow the user to always know where he or she is and how he or she can navigate to a different area, or satisfy a different need;

To avoid frustrating experiences;

To give him or her good reasons to trust you and hopefully become a customer.

If all those aspects are optimized, you are automatically minimizing the loss of purchases and the rate of unsatisfied visitors. There are other reasons (e.g.: psychological) why people may pass on buying a product or using a service, but you will never be able to influence or control all of them.
But you can control the User Experience Design.

What is the difference between UI and UX?

The UI (User Interface) sums up all the elements a user can interact with. This includes for example navigation bars and buttons. Consequently, the UI is an important part of the User Experience you should always take care of.

How you design the UI in terms of technical functionality and visual looks and appearance can make a noticeable difference. Things you should consider regarding the UI are:

Usage of fonts, symbols and colors

Their size and interaction effects

Their functionality and logical flow

Try to make it as easy and understandable as possible for your customers to navigate and interact with your UI. And, crucially, your mobile UI (responsive design) has a huge impact on the user experience, and is even more important than the desktop UI design, given the constraints of space of your mobile UI. Also, since 2015 Mobile UX is a critical ingredient in Google’s ranking algorithm, and hence is essential for a good SEO effort.

What's the ROI (Return on Investment)?

UX and UI Design is all about improving the satisfaction of your customers. If you achieve this, your conversion (funnel) statistics will get better, and thus the profitability of your ecommerce website, as well as your ranking on search engines.